For the 2004-05 academic year, the financially struggling University of Hawai'i athletic program had:

(a) A surplus of $776,071?

(b) A deficit of $2.15 million?

(c) A deficit of $92,785?

The answer — according to UH — is all of the above.

The school announced the first figure in filings to the U.S. Department of Education through the NCAA late last year.

The second figure was provided to the Indianapolis Star newspaper this year and published in April.

The third number, compiled by the independent auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, was announced at the UH Board of Regents meeting in February.

All of the figures, according to athletic department spokeswoman Lois Manin, are correct in their varying contexts and requirements.

Confused by the contradictory reports that purport to represent the financial health of college athletic programs?

Industry specialists and critics say you aren't alone. They say the wide array of numbers for a single year — both at UH and elsewhere — are illustrative of a lack of fiscal transparency that frustrates attempts at scrutiny and accountability.

B. David Ridpath, a professor in sports administration at Mississippi State and executive director of The Drake Group, a national faculty lobby for academic integrity, said, "It is undisputed that intercollegiate athletes in many ways is a bad investment and bad business model. Very few actually generate a profit (and) many that do profit are still subsidized by the general university budget and there is no end in sight of ballooning budgets due to the ever-expanding arms race."

So much so that UH athletic director Herman Frazier, who has presided over the past three of UH's four consecutive deficit years and a $4.6 accumulated debt, has maintained, "When we do get in the black, we'll be the only team in this (nine-school Western Athletic Conference) that is."

The Reno Gazette Journal reported Nevada is looking at a deficit of between $300,000 and $400,000 while Fresno State, the WAC's most well-heeled school, has been paring down a $1 million deficit.

Estimates are that only 10 to 20 percent of the 117 Division I-A football-playing programs balance their budgets and the figures, experts caution, would be much lower if not for loans and subsidies from academics that often don't show up in reports.

The so-called athletic "arms race" and rising expenditures that accompany it have become such a point of concern that NCAA President Myles Brand has convened a task force to address fiscal responsibility.

Tom Ramsey, a math professor and member of the Manoa Faculty Senate, declined to speak specifically about UH, but said, "...the marriage of sports and university education has not been happy nationwide. I sometimes wonder why pro football doesn't have farm clubs just like baseball does, and thus create a clearly understandable path to success in football without pretending that scholar-athletes are doing football as a 'hobby.' "

Murray Sperber, a former Indiana University professor and author of four books on college athletics, said, "Athletic departments will historically claim they are a business when they want to keep all the revenue but, at the end of the year when when there's a deficit, they turn to the university because you can't close the books in a deficit position at a traditional university."

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com.